4 Ways to Make a Boring Brand Viral on Facebook
We outlined the importance of brand resonance for virality here. To sum up, the more emotional people get about your brand, the easier it will be to build viral loops around your apps and content. So, what if you have a brand with low resonance?
Most brands have low resonance, and it is very difficult to spread most brands virally on Facebook. We have developed a couple of techniques to get around this hurdle. To raise the resonance of a viral campaign for a boring brand, you must affiliate the boring brand with a brand that people can get excited about. We have four strategies to do this.
#1 Causes
Cause marketing has been very successful for bringing boring brands virality. Two great examples are Chase Community Giving and Walmart Fighting Hunger Together. In all these cases, the brand sponsoring the campaign wasn’t particularly resonant, but they got people excited about that the causes they would be giving money to. People can get passionate about causes. As a result, the sponsor earns a lot of viral advertising and PR.
#2 Holidays
Not all holidays are created equal, but in general they are times for people to share heightened emotions. 4th of July in the USA brings on strong feelings of patriotism and pride, Christmas invokes sharing and caring emotions and gifting and reciprocity behaviors. Brands can and should take advantage of holidays to build promotions.
#3 Free Stuff
Sweepstakes and giveaways get people excited about free stuff instead of focusing on the brand. The power of this technique is directly proportional to how much free stuff the brand is willing to give away. For example, I can 100% guarantee a “Like the Chevy Facebook Page, get a free Corvette” promotion would go viral, while “Like the Del Monte Facebook Page, get 30 cents of creamed corn” wouldn’t.
#4 Funny
Funny is probably the biggest brand in the world. Every human being can resonate with funny. The Old Spice Guy campaign is a great example of a less exciting brand creating incredible resonance through a funny campaign. The most reproducible way of creating funny on the internet has been through viral videos.
Learn more behind the science of virality in this free webinar: The Secrets of Virality
cateogories: Uncategorized